7/21: (Wednesday) Today marks 7 days along the journey of the three weeks where the crack in everything beckons a polishing the luminal darkness of this time. How does the crack in every thing, every moment and every experience in your life point to a looming destruction known as hurban? It feels like there is a non-dual awareness of destruction’s darkness reveals the lack of its separation from light inside with this next poem from Shevili’s recent collection, Poems to Yova (2022):

In my destruction
destruction
my destruction
for within it all are
you
also me

Questions for self-reflection:

1. If nondualism points to the direct first-person experience, which reveals that the mind has no separate observer from its contents, then how might destruction be experienced as a invitation for an intimate spiritual refinement?
2. If destruction is an all-consuming power that dissolves any difference between “you” and “I”, then how does it reveal the reality of an ongoing unitive experience of vulnerability, doubt and darkness during this cycle leading to the ultimate catastrophe of the destruction of the inner temple at the end of this 21 day cycle? How and why is it possible to limit this cycle of descent into this “dark night of the soul” to 3 complete cycles of 7 days?
3. Contemplate this textures of destruction in this painting by Anselm Kiefer in correlation to this poem by Benjamin Shevili. Consider how Shevili’s destruction relates to Kiefer’s “Anathor,” which is an archaic word that refers to a self-feeding digesting furnace that maintained a uniform and durable heat and was used by alchemists as well as the Nazis in their death camps.
Artwork: Anselm Kiefer’s “Athanor” (1983)